Keri Arthur - Destiny Kills

“Mom?” I said softly. “It’s me.”

“No.” There was a long pause, as if she were searching for the right thing to say, then, “I told you not to.”

Her words were slurred, her voice filled with a deep sense of weariness and hopelessness. And pain, great, great pain.

It hurt to think that she’d come to such a point where nothing seemed worth fighting for. But it also hurt that she would think I could simply walk away, leaving her here for these monsters to continually prod, and poke, and sample.

I studied the shadows, trying to pin down her location. “I won’t let you die here, Mom. Come on, I’ve found a way out for us.”

“There is no point. My time is too near.”

Fear clutched at my heart. She had given up on her life. Well and truly given up.

No, part of me wanted to shout. This isn’t like you. We need to fight them. We can’t let them win. Damn it, she’d always been a fighter. Even Dad had acknowledged that. I guess that was part of the reason I’d gone to find her when I was old enough. She hadn’t come, as Dad had promised she one day would, so I’d gone to find and free her. And in the foolishness of youth, had presumed I’d succeed where she had long failed.

What had the scientists done to her that it had come to this?

I finally spotted her silhouette. She was standing near the air-conditioning vent, not facing it but rather with her back to it, so that the slight breeze stirred her hair and flung the dark strands across her face.

For some reason, fear stirred all the more strongly.

“Mom, I won’t leave unless you do.”

“Destiny—”

“No,” I said, more violently than I intended. “There’s no debating this. You’re leaving this goddamn place. They’ve taken you from our lives, taken your life. I won’t let them take you in death as well.”

She was silent for a moment, then sighed. “If you wish.”

“I damn well do wish.”

She hesitated, then stepped forward, and the lampshade’s pale light washed across her face. Or what remained of her face.

My mother had been blinded.

And not just blinded, but disfigured. It almost looked like acid had been splashed across part of her face and her eyes. The left side of her face had an almost melted look, reminding me of the way plastic held too close to a fire softened, then ran. And her eyes—oh God.

I gulped back bile and resisted the urge to look away. One socket had no eye at all. It was just a space filled with scarred and ravaged skin. The other, barely visible under her drooping eyelid, was white. Pure white.

“Not a pretty sight, is it?” she said softly.

There was no bitterness in her voice, no anger, and I think that was even more shocking than what had been done to her.

“Why?” It was all I could say, all I could think to say.

She smiled, though only half her mouth lifted. “They got sick of me trying to escape, so they decided to do something about it. I’ve had a long time to get used to the feel of it, Destiny.”

It certainly explained why they’d never let me see her. I was fiercely glad they hadn’t decided to blind me , as well, and suddenly wondered if Egan had been my savior in more ways than one. After all, I’d done more than my fair share of attempting to escape in the early years of my capture, and blinding me most certainly would have stopped that.

But maybe they figured that having a mutilated female wouldn’t have done their aim to have a breeding pair too much good.

“That’s just—”Words fled. Somehow, monstrous and evil just didn’t seem to cover what they’d done adequately enough. I took a deep breath in an effort to cut the sick churning in my stomach, then said, “Was it deliberate?”

“They intended to take my sight, so yes, but my strength took them by surprise and it went slightly wrong.” Bitterness crept into her voice. “Even after all this time, they are still surprised by the things we do. Despite all their technology, they have not learned that much about us. It is, perhaps, the only blessing in this whole mess.”

Anger swirled through me. “Damn it, Mom, why didn’t you call the loch? Why didn’t you punish the bastards for doing this?”

“Because I can’t.”

I blinked. “What?”

“I can’t call the loch. At first I think it was drugs, but the longer it went on, the more the restriction became a part of my very nature. I can’t control water anymore, Des. It’s been too long, and that part of my soul has shriveled up and died.”

Fear slithered through me. “But controlling water is as much a part of you as flying and fire are to an air dragon. How can your own nature restrict something like that?”

“Because there is a limit to how long a sea dragon can be away from the sea, Destiny. Loch and lake may sustain us for years, but we need to be in the sea if we are to retain the sea in our souls.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep, shuddery breath. I’d speculated that this might be the case, but I’d certainly been hoping that it wasn’t true. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you’re a half blood. Because no one—not even me—really knows how the rules apply to a sea dragon who has the fire of the day running through their blood.” She hesitated. “What was the point in warning you, when the rules might not apply to you? Only . . . it seemed they did.”

A chill ran through me at her words. “How close had I come to losing my powers?”

“Very.” She rubbed her arms lightly, as if similarly chilled. “It took five years for my control to fade, Des, and that was longer than I’d thought possible. I could feel the slip of power in you after eleven years. You were walking the edge of losing your soul when you broke out of here.”

And still she hadn’t warned me. Maybe she simply didn’t want to worry me any further. “So it wasn’t just for Dad’s sake that you wanted me out?”

She smiled gently. “It was for both of you. I didn’t want either of you to suffer.”

“And you think Dad or I don’t want the same for you? Do you think we don’t care whether you die here or die free?”

“Des, the love of my life is dead, and my soul is shattered. The place of my death no longer matters, only death itself.”

The place did matter, because without the dawn ceremony, her soul would be as lost as my dad’s would have been. It was just more evidence to the fact that she wasn’t thinking entirely straight—and whether it was drugs, or losing the sea, or something else entirely didn’t matter. She might sound reasonable, but she wasn’t.

“And,” she continued softly, “I have no choice in the death matter anyway. The drug they used to keep me calm over the years has done far more than just dampen the abilities I no longer have. Too much has built up in my system and it has poisoned me. It eats away at my insides, and there is no stopping it now. My time is close, Destiny.”

Her words made my heart ache—not just for her pain, but because I was losing her just when I’d finally found her. The family I’d hoped to regain once she was free was nothing more than ashes blowing on the wind. Just like my dad.

I blinked back tears and swept my gaze down the length of her, for the first time noticing how thin she was. Her hands were little more than skin stretched over bones, her ribs and hips protruding. Even if she could have escaped, it was doubtful she’d survive the cold, dark waters of the loch in that condition. There was no padding, no insulation against the cold. And while a dragon’s skin might be designed to protect us against the icy depths, tough hide alone was not enough.

“There may be no stopping it, but that doesn’t mean you have to die here.” I walked over to her and wrapped my arms around her. I might have been hugging a skeleton, but it felt so good to hold her after all these years of not even being allowed to see her. And to have her taken away so soon after finding her . . . Tears stung my eyes again but I blinked them back again. Now was not the time for grief. That could come later, when it was all over.